XRP Price Jumps 9% as Judge Overrules SEC

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  • The price of XRP is up more than 9% in spec­u­la­tive trad­ing after Judge Tor­res ruled the SEC to pro­duce key doc­u­ments relat­ing to a 2018 speech
  • It fol­lows a pre­vi­ous rul­ing by Mag­is­trate Judge Sarah Net­burn of the same nature ear­li­er this year

XRP, the sixth largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy by mar­ket val­ue, saw its price leap more than 8.8% on Thurs­day fol­low­ing a favor­able dis­trict court rul­ing for Rip­ple Labs — the coin’s stew­ard — in its case against the SEC.

Judge Anal­isa Tor­res ruled in favor of Rip­ple for the release of doc­u­ments it had been seek­ing from the finan­cial reg­u­la­tor. The doc­u­ments cen­ter around a 2018 speech giv­en by William Hin­man, for­mer Direc­tor of the SEC’s Divi­sion of Cor­po­ra­tion Finance.

Hinman’s speech, deliv­ered at the Yahoo Finance All Mar­kets Sum­mit in June of that year, pegs the for­mer direc­tor as say­ing ether was not con­sid­ered a secu­ri­ty — a point of con­tention Rip­ple is hop­ing to pick apart in its defense against the regulator.

It fol­lows Mag­is­trate Judge Sarah Netburn’s rul­ing against the SEC and its attempts to with­hold the doc­u­ments Rip­ple had sought, in Feb­ru­ary and again in April.

Ripple’s defense is based on the argu­ment that if ether was not con­sid­ered a secu­ri­ty at the time, then why should XRP — which is arguably more like a cur­ren­cy — be sub­ject to secu­ri­ties rules? Or so the think­ing goes.

In Decem­ber 2020, the SEC filed suit against Rip­ple as well as for­mer and present CEOs Brad Gar­ling­house and Chris Larsen, alleg­ing the com­pa­ny and its exec­u­tives vio­lat­ed secu­ri­ties laws in 2013 when they sought to raise funds with­out first reg­is­ter­ing with the agency.

Cen­tral to the case has been the dis­cov­ery of doc­u­ments, includ­ing emails, relat­ing to Hinman’s remarks, which the SEC has attempt­ed to argue fall under delib­er­a­tive process priv­i­lege (DPP).

DPP pro­tects cer­tain pre-deci­sion­al, inter­nal agency infor­ma­tion from dis­clo­sure dur­ing lit­i­ga­tion and is a fair­ly com­mon pro­vi­sion with­in most estab­lished democ­ra­cies, includ­ing in the US and Australia.

Both par­ties to the law­suit agreed that the case should be decid­ed by Judge Tor­res in a sum­ma­ry judge­ment expect­ed in the com­ing months.

XRP was the largest gain­er on the day, fol­lowed close­ly by the Bitfinex exchange token Unus Sed Leo (LEO) and Stel­lar (XLM) — Rip­ple co-founder Jed McCaleb’s sub­se­quent project — at 6.5% and 6% respec­tive­ly, as of press time.

All oth­er cryp­tos in the top 50 by mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion post­ed mixed gains, with bit­coin up about 1% on the day.


Attend DAS:LONDON and hear how the largest Trad­Fi and cryp­to insti­tu­tions see the future of crypto’s insti­tu­tion­al adop­tion. Reg­is­ter here


  • Sebas­t­ian Sinclair

    Block­works

    Senior Reporter, Asia News Desk

    Sebas­t­ian Sin­clair is a senior news reporter for Block­works oper­at­ing in South East Asia. He has expe­ri­ence cov­er­ing the cryp­to mar­ket as well as cer­tain devel­op­ments affect­ing the indus­try includ­ing reg­u­la­tion, busi­ness and M&As. He cur­rent­ly holds no cryptocurrencies.

    Con­tact Sebas­t­ian via email at [email pro­tect­ed]

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